Making Your CES Connections CountDecember 17, 2014
It's that time of year again. CES will rock Las Vegas in early January. Companies are gearing up and hoping to do a good job of cutting through all the loud and distracting background noise to share their messages at the show. It's a tough job, since CES is full of industry analysts, media representatives, investors and customers -- and they all want something different.

Sales and Marketing Aren't Aligned - but Their Problems AreDecember 08, 2014
The numbers prove it: Sales and marketing just aren't playing well together in most organizations. A not-so-small industry has sprung up to attack the issue of sales/marketing alignment, but the problem is so deeply entrenched that it may never be fully eradicated. That's a little weird when you think about it. The two sides are confronting problems that parallel each other.

AgilOne Bends Over Backwards to Understand CustomersDecember 01, 2014
AgilOne has rolled out an enhanced version of its predictive marketing platform with new tools, as well as improvements to fine-tune its forecasting capabilities, said CMO Dominique Levin. The focus of the upgrade was to automate even more of the analytics and subsequent decision-making by users. One of the new tools uses predictive analytics to uncover underserved customer segments.

Salesforce Adds App Hub to Centralize Customer Service on Desk.comNovember 25, 2014
Salesforce.com on Monday launched App Hub, an upgrade to its Desk.com customer service platform. App Hub features more than 50 apps for a wide range of functions including e-commerce, email marketing, telephony and text messaging. Partner apps available with Desk.com include Harvest, JIRA, MailChimp, Olark, Shopify, Twilio, Five9, NewVoiceMedia, OneReach, RingCentral and TalkDesk.

Is Your Mobile Campaign Working?November 21, 2014
More and more marketers are eager to engage with consumers on the devices they use for just about everything these days -- from connecting with friends and colleagues to consuming and creating content, playing games and, of course, shopping. But are the billions of dollars now being invested in mobile advertising paying off? Brands need to understand which marketing approaches work best.

SMS: It's Not Just for Marketing Any MoreNovember 20, 2014
There appears to be a new trend emerging in the enterprise mobile engagement space, according to OpenMarket. Increasingly, its enterprise customers are adapting its platform to use SMS in new ways, said Tim Fujita Yuhas, the company's director of product management. Sometimes those uses are obvious CRM plays; sometimes they fall more under the rubric of Internet of Things.

Twitter Opens Entire Multibillion-Tweet Gold Mine to SearchersNovember 20, 2014
Twitter this week began indexing every public tweet posted since it began operating in 2006. "Our long-standing goal has been to let people search through every tweet ever published," said Yi Zhuang, who led the project team. Use cases Zhuang cited for the new infrastructure include results for entire TV and sports seasons, conferences, industry discussions and long-lived hashtag conversations.

Picture This: Instagram for CRMNovember 18, 2014
With millions of active monthly users, Instagram is a prolific, lively social media community. Businesses want to get in on the Instagram game in order to boost marketing and enhance customer relations. It might not be immediately obvious to some businesses, however, just how they can get involved with Instagram and make it work for them. One way is to invite customers behind the scenes.

Nokia Hits the Comeback Trail With N1 TabletNovember 18, 2014
Nokia on Tuesday announced the N1 Android tablet, the first offering under its own brand since Microsoft's acquisition of its mobile phone business. The N1, slated for Q1 2015 release in China, will be made by Foxconn. Microsoft also offers a tablet under the "Nokia" brand -- the Nokia Lumia 2520 -- which raises the question of whether perhaps this might cause confusion among consumers.

The Terrifying Numbers Behind a Whopping Marketing FailureNovember 17, 2014
There are lots of scary things out there -- killer viruses, Earth-smashing meteors, the possibility of yet another Real Housewives show. But those are easy to dismiss and push to the farthest corner of the back of your mind. What's really distressing? Numbers. Numbers are really scary -- specifically, the numbers around things marketers know they should be doing but aren't.

Facebook Lubes PR Gears to Dampen Privacy WorriesNovember 14, 2014
Facebook on Thursday announced Privacy Basics, a set of interactive guides to answer the most commonly questions about how users can control their information on its site. It also aired proposed updates to its terms, data policy and cookies policy; improvements to ad targeting; and expansion of user control over ads. "This is mostly a messaging exercise," said tech analyst Rob Enderle.

Microsoft Makes Lumia 535 Its OwnNovember 12, 2014
Microsoft on Tuesday announced the Lumia 535 -- the first smartphone under its own brand since it completed its acquisition of Nokia in April. Microsoft is marketing the 535 as its "5x5x5" smartphone package. It has a 5-inch screen and 5-MP front- and rear-facing cameras. Microsoft will offer both single-SIM and double-SIM versions. Both will be 3G phones, preloaded with Windows Phone 8.1 and the Lumia Denim update.

Kana Burnishes Omnichannel Customer Engagement ToolsNovember 11, 2014
Kana has announced the first major upgrade of its flagship enterprise product following its acquisition earlier this year by Verint. Kana Enterprise Customer Engagement Optimization platform has been available since Oct. 31. At its core, the platform is the same, said Director of Product Marketing Kana Kelly Koelliker. It provides tools to facilitate customer engagement across multiple channels.

Money Makes the World Go Round on Singles DayNovember 11, 2014
Nov. 11 is Singles Day in China -- aka the "11.11 Shopping Festival" -- and the country's millions of unhitched celebrated the event by spending some quality time with online retail giant Alibaba. So far, the event has generated $9.3 billion in sales and 278 million orders shipped, the retailer reported. Slightly less than half, or 43 percent of those orders, were placed from mobile devices.

Bringing Luxury OnlineNovember 11, 2014
More shoppers are turning to websites as a way to connect with brands and make purchases, and companies are investing heavily in their online presence to ensure that they are delivering a top-notch experience. While the majority of retailers recognize the power of e-commerce, there remains a specific subset of sellers that are hesitant to hop on the online bandwagon: luxury brands.

5 Promises CRM Can't KeepNovember 10, 2014
Don't get me wrong -- I think very highly of CRM. I've been making a living writing about it for almost a decade, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Still, covering CRM is a little bit like writing an honest biography of a complex person. Yes, there were moments when your subject achieved great things and was covered in glory, but there were also times when he didn't behave so well.

Salesforce.com Unleashes Cloud Analytics Tidal WaveOctober 14, 2014
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff last month tweeted about the tentative agenda for this week's Dreamforce, and caused a tizzy revealing a keynote session entitled "Analytics Cloud." Although the company immediately denied that it was planning to unveil such a thing or that Benioff intentionally spilled the beans, Salesforce.com did indeed launch its analytics cloud, called "Wave."

Shooting for Sales? Give Marketing the Right WeaponsOctober 10, 2014
The old saw is that sales is a numbers game. That's kind of true -- but less so every passing year. In reality, it's becoming a productivity game: How can we make the sales people in our businesses as productive as possible? The key is to make marketing people as productive as possible, too -- which they're becoming, thanks to the advent of better software and smarter ways of using it.

Apple's 'Way Too Long' Invite Lands With a ThudOctober 09, 2014
Apple's pretty much annual October new product media event usually is preceded by a cute invitation sent to journalists. The invitation typically includes a phrase or graphic element that provides a vague clue to the secret agenda of the event.
Presumably, this is to drum up excitement and speculation, in addition to creating an ah-ha moment.

BlackBerry Tries, Tries Again to Remake Its BrandOctober 09, 2014
BlackBerry is trying to rebuild itself by remaking its brand. A successful brand is one of the most important parts of any success story. However once a brand has sprouted roots, it's very difficult to remake it. It's easier to start from scratch. So what is the plan at BlackBerry -- and will it be successful? The BlackBerry brand has grown and evolved over the last 10 to 15 years.

Facebook Sharpens Audience Network TargetingOctober 08, 2014
Facebook on Tuesday further opened its Audience Network to third-party developers and publishers. It debuted the platform in April, positioning it as a mobile monetization tool that would leverage Facebook's 1.5 million advertisers and the millions of users who sign into apps using their Facebook credentials. The platform is now available to developers and publishers around the world.

Make Your List and Check It Twice: Preparing for the 2014 Holiday SeasonOctober 08, 2014
With summer behind us, brands and retailers are busy finalizing their plans for the upcoming holiday rush. Like last year, this holiday season will be a short one, with just 26 days between Black Friday and Christmas. With this condensed shopping period and digital commerce on an aggressive upswing, the holiday season is no time for retailers to take chances.

How Microsoft, Lenovo and Clickfree Damage Their Collective Brand ExperienceOctober 03, 2014
What is a collective brand experience, and why is it so important for companies to understand and manage it correctly? It can't be ignored, because it will grow on its own and in harmful ways. However, most are shooting themselves in the foot on a daily basis. Companies understand the brand. Even so, only some do a good job at building, nurturing and protecting their own brand.

Facebook Launches Atlas to Shoulder the Whole Digital-Advertising WorldSeptember 29, 2014
Facebook on Monday announced Atlas, a rebuilt ad platform that gives marketers access to its vast troves of user data and helps them direct highly targeted ads across the Web. "Atlas delivers people-based marketing, helping marketers reach real people across devices, platforms and publishers," explained Erik Johnson, head of the new Facebook service.